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Blizzard's Korean office raided over Diablo 3 complaints

Despite a rocky Diablo III launch, Blizzard has been gradually making the game experience more enjoyable for its players. But it appears some players in South Korea are not so easily appeased.

The Diablo III experience has gradually gotten better after a rocky launch, with Blizzard working diligently to fix in-game issues, stabilize servers and improve the experience. But the company is in hot water in South Korea over those same issues because of its refund policy.

Blizzard's Seoul offices were raided by Korean authorities this week because of complaints to the country's Fair Trade Commission that the company would not issue refunds to players unhappy with the game, according to The Korea Times. The FTC said it is investigating whether Blizzard was "ill-prepared" for the crush of players, and looking into whether the company's no-return policy violates Korean law on electronic commerce and commercial contracts.

A spokesman for the FTC told The Times that it had received enough complaints from Diablo III players to launch an investigation. Blizzard Korea has doubled its servers and has promised to improve its service to avoid further problems, but it hasn't been enough to staunch the complaints and assuage disgruntled players.

If the FTC finds that Blizzard violated the law, it could force the company to issue refunds to those requesting them. All of Blizzard's franchises--World of Warcraft, StarCraft, and Diablo--have a huge fan base in Korea, perhaps prompting the added government scrutiny.

John Keefer

Contributing Editor

John Keefer is a curmudgeon that has been in journalism for 35 years, the last 16 in the video games industry. He loves real-time strategy games and prefers old-school Total Annihilation to StarCraft. He also loves isometric RPGs, and has been addicted to World of Warcraft for more than 10 years. He sucks at shooters and multiplayer and is purely a PC guy. And being a former member of Shack, he also likes Chatty. Go figure.